


Brown, Probably

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Dark Angel (TV)
Genre: COVID-19, Eyes Only - Freeform, Gen, Humor, Secret Identity, Secret Identity Fail, Timeline What Timeline, but like a very lowkey kind of humor, mask mandates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: The COVID-19 mask mandates cause some significant problems for Logan Cale. Namely, people on the street are looking at your eyes andonlyyour eyes.
Relationships: Logan Cale | Eyes Only & Max Guevara | X5-452
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	Brown, Probably

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I haven't written Dark Angel fic in a literal decade, but I started thinking about how now I actually notice things like eye color because literally every other feature is covered up. 
> 
> Which would be you know, straight terrible if your secret identity is Eyes Only.

People don’t pay attention to eyes. Not really. If you’d have asked eighteen-year-old Logan Cale the eye color of any one of his numerous acquaintances, he’d give the same answer for most of them: _Brown, probably._ And he’d be right more often than not.

The rest of the spectrum he’d probably lump together into the category of _not brown_ if for no other reason than light colored eyes tend to look different in different settings. His own eyes shift from green to hazel to almost gray depending on the time of day and the color of his shirt. In all the old movies, he always thought that he could have picked out a superhero by the shape of their jaw. The tiny domino mask hiding eye color behind white lenses was almost laughable camouflage. But line up ten pairs of brown eyes and ask him which belonged to his father?

Logan wouldn’t manage it.

As a cyberhacker, he goes with the moniker Eyes Only and he puts his own gaze on the screen. It lets him leverage the kind of discomfort that only direct eye contact can bring and despite all the nonsense about eyes being windows to the soul, Logan’s soul has remained anonymous.

* * *

It works.

It works very well for a surprisingly long time. The only one who puts Logan Cale and Eyes Only together is Max, and he can’t really guard against a genetically engineered super-soldier performing borderline inhuman feats to rob him.

So…

Max knows. And armed with that information, she can easily diagnose that he’s used his own image in the broadcasts, everything but his eyes hidden under a red, white and blue banner.

“Seriously?” she asks, arching a single, perfect eyebrow. “No one has recognized you?”

“Why would they?”

Max laughs at him.

The sound does something to his stomach. Something that he recognizes could be dangerous if left unchecked. He’s known her for less than two months and he was hospitalized for most of it. That sound shouldn’t already be one of his favorite things to hear in the world—

“Don’t you have any friends?” Max asks.

—Because no matter how much he’s starting to like her Max has the uncanny ability to remind him why he should keep those barriers strong. “Of course I have friends.”

“And none of them,” Max drawls, “not even one, would recognize you based on your eyes.”

“What color were Zack’s eyes?”

He sees the hurt flash across her face. And oh, he hates that he can already do this, that their acquaintance, still incredibly fresh, holds just as may seeds of mutual destruction as it does quid pro quo.

Max shoves the look away, burying it under a sardonic smile and answers with almost-believable flippancy, “Probably brown.”

* * *

He’s worrying about the sickness well before he has a name for it. The initial reports boil down to _highly contagious pneumonia_ and with paraplegia as an underlying condition, Logan’s definitely in a high risk group. And he’s one of the few in a high risk group that can afford decent medical care. Dump something like this into a population without stable housing or access to doctors and it’s a recipe for a whole lot of death.

He’s compiling and editing down the public health data to the standard sixty seconds almost out of habit as he works on the next big story about corruption. He doesn’t think he’s going to have to use it. Not really. Seattle’s never been shy about tightening their sector security if it’s needed. 

Expect, during the first public acknowledgement of the virus, when it’s already infected at least two hundred people in a two block radius, the spokesperson is saying _nothing to worry about_ like they have no interest in spelling out preventative measures for a public health crisis that could cause hundreds of death.

So Eyes Only does it for them. Interrupts a presidential address about how the situation is under control to spell out exactly how fucked the situation is.

He ends the hack with a new sign off: _Wear a mask._

* * *

The quarantine hits them all hard. Seattle is already sectored, but the threat of the virus has tightened the hold. There are riots over toilet paper. Logan’s stockpile is big enough that he makes it through the first month without problem, but even in a quarantine, he’s got to eat. And he refuses to page Max to do his grocery runs. He sees how she eats given the option.

He wears a mask when he’s out. Homemade because obtaining an N95 would cause some unwanted attention and he doesn’t want to restart any riots. He doesn’t bother with gloves, because he’s pretty sure he can manage to wash his hands before he caves and touches his face.

The grocer eyes him warily when he checks Logan out, for once not focused on the wheelchair. He’s made direct eye contact, a knot forming between his eyebrows. Logan sees his mouth moving behind the mask, but can’t see the expression.

Logan smiles back, tight-lipped and awkward, except his mouth is covered and conveying a smile that politely says _back the fuck off_ is hard to do with eyes alone.

* * *

Max’s eyes are brown.

So are Bling’s and Sung’s.

And yeah, that’s exactly what Logan would have guessed, but now he _knows_.

He doesn’t like it.

* * *

Logan has internal debates over glasses. Long, detailed debates. His eyes aren’t great, but he can definitely get by without wearing them. The cost and difficulty of obtaining contact lenses make them a luxury he only sometimes indulges. The fog from the mask makes glasses themselves a nuisance, but they also afford some extra camouflage to his face.

“How’s that anonymity going for you?” Max asks.

“I’m working on it.”

He’s been wondering if he can find yellow-tinted glasses. He definitely has enough screen time to merit them. He’s also wondering if suddenly changing to tinted lenses would only further suspicions. He’s going to have to figure something out though. In addition to groceries he’s still going in for semi-regular checkups on his injury. Turns out you need more than a couple months to recover from a bullet wound.

And that’s before he even starts stressing about going to a hospital with a COVID wing.

“Too bad you didn’t use someone else’s face on the broadcast,” Max continues. “That would have been a pretty clever cover. Loop some brown-eyed lady in as you talk. Almost foolproof.”

She’s sipping at a glass of wine, clearly enjoying herself. Logan’s amused, too. It’s been a long time since he was around someone who would tease him. “It’s not like I can change it now.”

“You know I could have been a rocking Eyes Only.” Max swirls the wine in her glass. “Top of the class. No one would have found me out.”

“I haven’t been found out, yet.”

“You ever consider not wearing a mask?”

Logan has considered it. And he hates himself for having considered it. “No,” he lies. “We can’t all be virus-resistant super-soldiers like you.”

* * *

“Yo!” one of Max’s coworkers shouts. “You look like that cable hack guy!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Original Cindy says, “what would my girl be doing hanging out with so weird ass cyber guy?” She looks down to Logan. “Okay, but for real, you do look like the cable hack guy.”

“Tell Max I stopped by,” Logan says, making a hasty retreat.

* * *

“Okay, I solved your problem,” Max says. She slings off her messenger bag as she enters his penthouse.

Logan, knee deep in research frowns distractedly at her. “What problem?”

“Your secret identity problem.”

“I don’t have a secret identity.”

“Right because you’re just some nerd with a computer,” Max counters. “I still figured out your problem.”

Logan closes his laptop. “Fine. I’ll play.”

“The whole problem is eye contact, right?”

“Right,” Logan concedes. “Which is about the only part of your face anyone gets to look at anymore.”

Max tosses something into his lap. “Then you give them something else to look at.”

Logan looks down. “No.”

Max’s mouth twitches. “You know it will work.”

* * *

Two days later, Logan heads to his check-up.

“Quite a mask, you got there,” Dr. Carr observes, as he moves to check the incision on Logan’s back.

Logan grits his teeth behind the yellow and purple tiger strips. Max’s roommate had made it for him out of an old pair of… something. At Max’s insistence he’d sent over a half dozen fresh eggs as a thank you. “Make do with what we have.”

Dr. Carr makes a soft noise of acknowledgement. Logan has to restrain himself from asking if the doctor remembers his eye color. But that’s a risk in itself. And this whole thing has been about mitigating risk.

He wonders what Dr. Carr’s answer would be.

(He hopes it’s brown.)

**Author's Note:**

> WEAR A MASK.


End file.
